Page 90 of Dare To Free Us

Vinny and the older doctor— Eduardo— stood on one side of the bed, Steven on the other.

I laid quiet, staring at the white ceiling, doing my best to remember what happened before I lost consciousness, which apparently was a whole week ago.

There was the unbearable memory of saying goodbye to Arianna. The door slamming in my face and Vinny driving like a mad man to the safe-house. I passed out somewhere along the way but never expected to wake up.

I remembered being slumped in the back seat thinking of Arianna’s smile and golden eyes. Trying to hold on to them as the dark crept in and stole her away from my vision. I thought when I closed my eyes that was going to be it.

But instead, I was waking up to a room I’d never needed myself, feeling comparable to hammered dog shit with more trouble looming over me.

Steven and Vinny— and Eduardo apparently— knew about Luca now. After they came for me and showed their level of loyalty I hoped I hadn’t made the wrong decision by letting them in on the secret. Luca would know how to handle interruption to his and Becka’s new found life. They had extra sets of identification and plenty of money to take necessary actions.

Luca would take care of Arianna, and that’s all that mattered, damn the consequences I would face.

I lifted my head to sit up but my body didn’t move. Instead there was a crack of lightening throughout my entire body, striking extra hard in my stomach. “Fuck,” I groaned, letting my head fall back to the stiff pillow.

“Easy, Matteo,” Eduardo warned, shaking his head covered in white hair that matched his well trimmed beard. “You will need time to recover.”

“I don’t have time.” There was too much to do. Too much to put to bed before I could go after Arianna. “Does Arianna know I’m alive?”

Steven shook his head. “Luca refused to give me a number so I could contact him. Said it was for everyone’s safety. That you would know how to reach him when the time came.”

I nodded not feeling at all settled. The last I saw of Arianna I was basically dying. Was she sitting somewhere crying over me because she thought I was dead? It had been a week and that was plenty long enough to destroy anyone’s hope.

“I can give you enough meds to keep the pain from overwhelming you, but your body will take time to get strength back. You won’t be leaving this room for a least a few days. You very nearly died, Matteo.”

I sucked in a breath. I was that close to never seeing my amazing, beautiful wife give birth to our child.Never again.It didn’t matter what it took, after I recovered, I was out.

I was done giving this life everything and having it try to take the best parts of me by force. Arianna, our baby, our family was all that I wanted to give myself too.

“We buried your mother,” Steven said quietly.

I got a sick feeling in my stomach. My mother, she’d never see her grandchild. Never hold them and know they weren’t destined to be a monster or a pawn. She deserved that, but all I could do was take comfort in the fact the man who took it away from her was dead.

Still, tears formed in the corners of my eyes, but they didn’t fall. Maria deserved a bucket of tears, only, old habits die hard. Too many years of holding everything in wasn’t going to be gone overnight. I was sure wherever Arianna was, she’d cried a river of tears.

Pulling in a shallow breath I put my focus on business. No doubt things were in chaos and wondered what whirlwind of shit I’d woken to. “Give me the rundown, Vinny. Tell me everything.”

* * *

Eduardo snippeda stitch on my chest and gently tugged it free of my skin. The bright pink scars, still tender, were a stark contrast to my olive skin. It took fifty stitches to close up my chest and another dozen to fix the hole in my stomach. Some of the stitches had been sown inside and would disintegrate over time.

It had been five days since I’d woken up, which I spent in the room slowly getting strength back enough to walk without hunching over. The pain in my stomach was still intense but Eduardo kept me on a steady dose of pain killers.

Vinny and Steven were invaluable the five days I spent recovering. Whatever respect I had for them before tripled with their show of dedication. I doubted either of them had slept much and appreciated their fake show of vitality every time they came to check in.

There were just over twenty men left that Vinny and Steven were confident had nothing to do with Nico’s betrayal and still following my orders. The others were in the process of being hunted down. The meth labs had all but shut down due to the cooks leaving town in fear of being caught in the middle of the internal war, or there simply wasn’t enough men to go around to make the locations safe to cook. The drugs we smuggled in ceased altogether. We focused on keeping distributers happy with reserved stock. Guns were about the only thing still rolling along just fine.

The businesses, such as Ecstasy and Red, and several others were still in working order. Managers and staff hadn’t known about the internal war nor been effected by it, so at least that was one thing I didn’t have to worry about.

My uncle had gone underground after Nico’s failure, but he wasn’t very good at hiding and I’d already ordered Steven to take care of it.

The MC was in the wind. Storm refused to answer my calls and there wasn’t a single The Devil’s Hoard cut seen in the city since the day Nico set his little plan in motion. I still didn’t have any idea whether they’d played a part or knew about it but running away didn’t look good.

Then O’Connell called, swearing on his mother’s grave that he had no part in it. I tended to believe him. O’Connell was not the type of man to lie or skirt the truth. If he’d known or been involved he would have admitted it and said it was just business. Plus, now that there were so few of my men left, he outnumbered us by more than double. If he wanted to fly in and finish the job he had the strength to do it.

So, when he asked for a face to face meet, I accepted. He had something brewing in that head of his— he always did— and I wanted to get it all on the table sooner rather than later.

Eduardo pulled the last stitch free, the burning sensation of sliding thread faded after a moment. “All done,” he said, giving a nod of satisfaction. “But if you’re not careful you will reopen the wounds, so nothing crazy.”

---